Jackson: “We’ve got to do it differently”

Mat Jackson has left Snetterton with the lead of the 2011 British Touring Car Championship after taking his fourth win of the season, and is hoping to take the fight to Chevrolet and Honda with the small independent team in the last four meetings of the season

The 30-year-old from Henley-in-Arden’s results at the Snetterton 300 circuit in Norfolk saw him move a clear eight points ahead of Honda Racing Team driver Gordon Shedden in the standings, and will go to Knockhill in September with the title of ‘championship leader’.

“Sounds good, 45 kilos doesn’t sound good,” said Jackson to TouringCarTimes. “We’ll see, if we can leave here leading the championship, brilliant, if we can leave every race leading the championship, you can’t ask for much more. I’m happy with it and hopefully we can go to Knockhill and build on this and be able to get a bit better up in qualifying as that is the key.”

A set-up problem for Jackson saw him wind up 13th on the grid for the first race, and it was looking set to be a tough weekend for the Motorbase Performance driver..

“It certainly looked that way, but we’re a tough bunch here at Motorbase – a testament to all the boys, they haven’t let their heads go down, they’ve all kept pushing and pushing to get more out of the car and we’ve moved it so fast in one day. To take a win away again, a huge thanks to everyone at Airwaves Racing for their efforts and time they put into it this weekend.”

Jackson’s victory at Snetterton was his fourth win of the year, with Jason Plato and Matt Neal the one only ones with a higher win tally this season with five each, but tellingly all of Jackson’s victories have come from the reversed grid third race, something Jackson is very aware of but believes is all part of the system.

“We struggle with qualifying, but at the end of the day a race win’s a race win…we’ve got to do it differently to how the Hondas are doing it. We’re an independent team that’s fighting the Chevrolets and Hondas, we don’t have the development budget to enable us to have the fastest car in qualifying. Yes it makes it hard and if we could achieve a race one win I’d be very happy, but at the end of the day we still get 17 points.”

Motorbase Performance further extend their position as the top scoring Ford team in the 2011 British Touring Car Chamopionship, with Jackson’s points total more than double that of Arena Motorsport’s Tom Chilton in the top placed ‘Global’ Ford Focus Mk.III, who is in ninth place in the standings.

“We don’t really share much, we’re just two completely different independent teams. We know what we’ve done with this car, we’ve brought it on, we’ve got some great guys that are involved and we’ve changed the car around massively from where it was. Brilliant for everybody at Airwaves to have achieved that.”